3. A Promise Kept

I grew up in a small, rural village in the north. My father was the eldest child in his family, so after he’d completed his university studies, he had moved back to his parent’s house to live with my grandfather and grandmother, and to work with my grandfather. Grandfather was a small-scale farmer, but his main business was in running earthmoving equipment. My father had studied engineering at university, so he was able to help my grandfather grow his business.

After a few years, my father married his university girlfriend. She didn’t mind moving out to the countryside. Even if it was far away from the excitement and convenience of Tokyo, my grandparent’s house was far bigger than what my parents would have been able to afford in the big city and they were able to save money.

Even before I was born, there weren’t many children in the village. Over the years, young people would grow up and move away to study or work, but few would return to rural farming life. A few years after I was born, my grandfather’s neighbour passed away, and his daughter and her husband moved into the village to help the neighbour’s widow manage their fields. They had a little girl, whose name was Misaki.

Misaki was a few years younger than me, but because there were so few children in the village, a difference in age didn’t matter so much. If you could run about and keep up with the other kids, that was enough. The houses of Misaki’s family and my family were close together and the fields radiated out from them. My grandfather said they were built like that because of the well people used to draw water from. It was fed by a natural spring, so the water was fresh and surprisingly cold. My father said he remembered the day the electric pump was installed; before that it had been one of his chores to go out and manually pump water into the cistern that sat between the houses. By the time I was born, all the houses were plumbed into the town water supply, but the well was still there for irrigation and other uses.

Because our houses were so close together, Misaki and I used to play together a lot. I called her parents Uncle and Aunty. We’d play with the other kids, or if we felt like it was too far or too hot to meet up, we would just play by ourselves. When we were still little, during the heat of summer, my father or grandfather would do something with the well pump and fill up the old cistern like a swimming pool and Misaki and I would splash around in the chill water. We were really like siblings when you think about it. When I started elementary school, Misaki used to wait at the end of the long driveway for me to come home, and once she started elementary school we would walk together. The younger grades let out earlier than the older grades, so she would wait for me in the school entryway for me to finish so we could go home together. To be honest, it got a little tiresome as I got older, but she would also show me a huge happy smile when I came out after changing my school slippers to shoes, that I couldn’t be angry at her just for being a kid.

Even after I entered junior high school, Misaki would wait at the gate of the elementary school for me to pass by on my way home, and then join me for the rest of the way. I remember one of the other boys in my grade making fun of me about it.

“Oh, look! Kazu’s wife is waiting for him!”

“I’m not his wife,” said Misaki, putting her hands on her hips. “I can’t marry him until he’s graduated high school. His mother said so and I promised to wait.”

That didn’t help matters at all. I complained to my mother that night.

“Well, it’s true,” she said, slicing vegetables in the kitchen. “If you’re going to marry that girl, you at least need to finish high school.”

“Who says I’m going to marry Misaki?!”

Because of our age difference, as I moved into senior high school, Misaki entered the junior high school I had just graduated from. While our countryside elementary and junior high schools were near each other, I ended up studying in a technical high school that was almost two hours from home each way by bus and train. I would leave around six in the morning and get home around seven at night, so I hardly saw Misaki except sometimes on the weekends and occasionally during the breaks. Even then, I didn’t pay her much more attention than a familiar face or semi-distant relative; she was a middle-schooler, still rail-thin and flat as a board. I was much more interested in the girls at my high school. And because I was planning to study engineering like my father had, during the summer and spring breaks I would work with him in my grandfather’s business, so any free time I could have spent with Misaki was very limited.

In the last year of my high school studies, I had the opportunity to move into a dormitory near the school to save time on the commute, and because I was preparing for university entrance exams I only came home once for a week around the New Year holidays. During that time Misaki was sick with influenza. I ended up getting accepted to a national university on a scholarship. Because it was so far away, with my parents’ reluctant blessing, I moved away to study on the understanding that I would return when I graduated so that my grandfather could finally retire.

Towards the end of my first year at university, I ended up with a girlfriend. Her name was Nanami. I was sure we were going to get married, until she confronted me halfway through my final year of studies.

“Haven’t you found a job yet for after graduation? You’re leaving it awfully late.” She started badgering me about how she’d been out at job fairs, recruitment seminars, and group interview sessions, and I never seemed to go to any.

“I don’t need to. I told you; I have a job.”

“What?” she sneered. “In the sticks? I thought that was a joke.”

“I made a deal with my parents.”

“But it’s in the middle of nowhere,” Nanami whined. “There’s nothing there. You can’t even find it on a map!”

“You can too. There’s even a train station and everything.”

“Oh yeah – and one train a day each way,” she scoffed. “You’re not seriously planning on going back to the bumblefuck countryside, are you?”

“I am. You knew that.”

“I thought you’d realise that I was more important and stay here.”

“I promised my father and my grandfather. I’m not going back to drive a tractor, you know. I’ll be doing the same kind of engineering I could do in the city. In fact, even better than the city because there’s loads of work but less competition so much more opportunity.”

Nanami folded her arms and looked at me, expectantly.

“There is no way I am moving to the boonies. You need to choose.”

Six months later, I was on the train. As I looked out the window, the taller buildings gave way to smaller buildings, and the distance between the towns increased in inverse proportion to the decreasing size of the towns. It was like I was in a time machine, going back the four years I had been away. The daylight gave way to dusk and then to darkness, the likes of which I hadn’t seen in years; barely punctuated by the light of an isolated house or headlamps flickering in the distant hills. For the last thirty minutes, I was the only person on the train apart from the driver.

When the train pulled into the station, there was a single light bulb over the platform sign. I stepped out of the one-man-car and heard the doors close and the diesel engine wind up again as the train pulled away. In the darkness, an engine turned over and came to life. I turned towards the sound and the headlights came on. I walked to the steps leading away from the platform and saw my father standing next to his old mini truck. His hair was thinner but still black.

“Train’s on time.”

“There weren’t too many people getting on or off to slow us up.”

Such was the first face-to-face conversation between father and son for the first time in four years. He turned around and opened the driver’s door.

“Mum’s got dinner waiting.”

“Okay.”

I threw my bags in the back of the kei truck and got in. With a crunch of gravel under the wheels, my father took off into the darkness. Speeding along the rough road that ran towards my grandfather’s house, and veering suddenly off onto the raised dirt verge that separated the rice fields, I began to make out the lights of the old-fashioned farmhouse where I was born and raised. My father wrenched the wheel again and the truck skidded a stop near the house. He killed the engine, and we got out.

My mother came hurrying out to greet me, while my grandfather followed behind at the sedate pace appropriate for one of his age.

“Ahh! Kazu! You’re so tall! You’re so skinny! Didn’t we send you enough money for food!? Come in!” My mother fussed as she hugged me. I bowed to my grandfather, and he nodded back.

“Kazu-kun,” he said. “Come inside. Your mother’s been cooking all day. I’ve been ready for a drink for hours, but she wouldn’t let us start drinking until we’d eaten, and we couldn’t eat until you got here.”

My mother rounded on my grandfather, and I took the opportunity to grab my bag from the back of the truck. My father was standing there looking at it.

“Is that all?” he asked.

I shrugged.

“Didn’t need the furniture, not that I had much. Sold everything or dumped it. A few boxes of books and my computer are coming by courier sometime this week.”

He nodded and clapped me on the shoulder.

“So, you are really back. Good.” He steered me inside, following after my mother who was still berating my grandfather.

After I’d dropped my bag in my room, which hadn’t changed at all since I’d left, I changed into a t-shirt and shorts. Then I washed my hands and went into the main room. My mother had laid out the table with all manner of home cooking, with plenty of my favourites. I sat down with my parents and grandfather, and my mother opened some tall bottles of beer. I grabbed one and poured the glass for my grandfather, then my father, then my mother.

“I should be pouring the drinks,” she protested.

“Shh,” said my grandfather, with a twinkle in his eye. “Kazu’s the new hire - let him show off the results of that fancy finishing school you sent him to.”

My father snorted at my grandfather’s reference to university as a finishing school. Grandfather had been making the same joke since before I was born. My grandfather held up his glass.

“To my grandson, the most eligible bachelor in the village. Kanpai.”

My father and mother echoed his toast. I followed a moment later. After he drained his glass, my father winked at me.

“Of course, you are the only bachelor in the village, so you get that by default.”

There was a commotion near the front door.

“Oh, they’re here!” My mother got up and disappeared into the entryway. I heard voices and then–

“Ah, you started without us?! How rude! But I guess Kazu-kun must have been gagging for a drink after being on the trains all day. Say, you got a haircut since I last saw you!”

Our neighbours had arrived, and it was clear that Misaki’s father had just come out of the bath because his hair was still wet.

“Sho, you’re the one who is late,” scolded Misaki’s mother. “But you insisted on trying to fix that tractor tonight.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” said Misaki’s father dismissively, taking a seat across the table. He held up his glass. “Beer please.” I grabbed the tall bottle nearest me and leant across the table to pour. “Oh, Kazu-kun! Trying to make a good impression already?”

“A good impression?” I was confused.

“Look,” he said to someone over my shoulder. “Kazu’s finally got a haircut.”

I turned my head to see who he was talking to. It was Misaki. But she wasn’t the thin-legged middle schooler with pigtails I recalled. This Misaki wasn’t much taller than I remembered, but she was much rounder in all the right places. Her hair was in a longish bob, and it looked like she must have been helping her parents out on the farm or something because her arms were smooth but firm, her waist was slim between her large breasts and wide hips, and she had a healthy tan that I could see went all the way up her arms because of the tank top she was wearing.

“Mi-Misaki?” I stuttered.

“Hey!” her father yelled. “It’s full! It’s full!” I turned back to see that, while I had been gawking at my now grown-up childhood friend, I’d overpoured her father’s glass and spilled beer onto the table.

“Oh shit!” I said, jerking the bottle back up.

“So much for making a good impression,” my father commented as my mother frantically mopped at the table with paper towels.

After the chaos had died down, everybody sat down, and we started again with a proper toast. Even though Misaki wasn’t twenty yet, she still joined us in the toast. My mother sat at the end of the table near the kitchen with Misaki’s mother, my father and Misaki’s father sat either side of my grandfather, and Misaki ended up sitting next to me.

After I had endured lots of questions about my life away and university and what I was looking forward to about coming back home, I had a moment to talk with Misaki.

“I’m sorry about that,” I said. “I–uh–was surprised at how much you’d grown over the past four years.”

She gave me a hard look.

“I was in junior high school when you left. What did you think would happen?”

“A girl can change a lot in four years,” my mother interjected, laughing. “You’ve changed too, Kazu. Look at how pale you’ve become.”

“I studied a lot.”

“That explains those little kid arms too,” slurred Misaki’s dad. He was pretty tipsy, but in a cheerful way. “Misaki-chan is more buff than you, Kazu-kun!”

Misaki seemed embarrassed.

“What’s this?” He teased Misaki. “You’re too shy to speak now that Kazu-kun is back?”

Everybody laughed at this except for me and Misaki, who was turning bright red in the face.

“Oh, that’s right!” her mother said. “Since we heard he was coming back, all we’ve heard for weeks is ‘Kazu this’ and ‘Kazu that’!” She laughed. “And now that he’s here she can’t say a thing!”

“Mother, what are you saying?!”

Misaki got up and stalked out angrily. We heard the front door open and close loudly.

All the elders laughed at this.

“You’ll have your hands full with that one,” said my grandfather. “Now, I have this shochu a client gave me. It’s pretty strong but very smooth. Shall I bring it out?”

This suggestion was met by cheers, and the evening became noisier as my welcome-home party stretched late into the night.

The next morning, when I woke up, everyone had already gone out to work. I wasn’t supposed to officially start until the next week, and I had to wait for my licensing paperwork to be transferred through to my home prefecture from my university. My father and grandfather would be at some job site, and my mother was probably out at one of our fields.

I got up from my futon and went into the kitchen. I ate the breakfast my mother had left for me, then brushed my teeth. I was standing on the veranda that ran along the front of the house and looking at the blue sky that promised a very warm spring afternoon, when Misaki came up the long driveway that served both our houses. She was riding a granny-bike, wearing leggings and a high school sports jersey with the sleeves rolled up. The basket was full of garden tools. It looked like she’d been out somewhere on her parent’s holdings.

“Good morning,” I said reflexively.

“Good morning...”

We looked at each other awkwardly. It was strange. Four years ago, we had never been so aware of each other. Misaki was the first to speak.

“So, welcome back, I guess.”

“Oh, thank you.”

“How long will you be here?”

“Well, I’m supposed to start working for my father so my grandfather can retire, so a while I guess.”

“No, I mean ‘here’. Your family’s home.”

“Maybe a month or two? I need to start earning some money before I can afford my own place. Although I’m not sure if there are any places around here to rent so...”

“What are you doing now?”

“Nothing special.” I yawned. “I guess I’ve been given the day off. But knowing my parents, they’ll put me to work on something tomorrow.”

“Okay. You can watch me do the bookwork then.”

It was a strange request, but I didn’t have anything else to do. Misaki went to park her bicycle and came back shortly with a bundle of folders and a calculator. We went inside and sat at the low table in the living room. She spread her things out and went to work. The mood was still a bit awkward.

We made small talk about various things while Misaki sorted receipts, wrote things down in different ledgers, and started running numbers. I noticed she seemed very practised.